Pray, You Sleepy-Headed Infidels!

Hearing the call to prayer is as much a part of living in Turkey as the thick pollution, the suicidal drivers, and the slowly dying Internet hamster. At first, it was kind of nice -- a frequent and even quaint reminder that we weren't in Kansas anymore. Sure, the call -- which goes off five times a day -- sounds like a loud-mouthed sheep in serious distress (at least to my untrained ear), but it’s still beautiful in a way. Unlike Turkish pop music, which also sounds like a sheep is being strangled but is not beautiful in any way.

The key, though, is to hear the call only four times a day -- because that first one's a doozy. It's supposed to go off at dawn, but apparently the local mosque has decided to switch its clock to Mecca Standard Time. As a result, for the past month we’ve been serenaded every morning at 4:30. La-la-la-la-laaaaaaaaaah! We all sleep through it, except for Rowan. And like a good little Turk, when he hears it he thinks it’s time to get up -- but instead of kneeling on his prayer rug, he wants to go downstairs and watch “Dora.” Which means for the past month, I’ve helped Dora win a dance off with costume-thieving piggie pirates, come to terms with being a new big sister, and help her mortal enemy escape from an evil magician’s giant glass bottle. And trust me, at 4:30 in the morning, Dora’s decision to save Swiper the Fox from the evil magician makes even less sense.

So safe to say, I’m not a huge fan of the local mosque right now. And it’s not just the insanely early hour of the call -- it’s the volume. It’s like the muezzin noticed that most of the neighborhood is sleeping in, so he decided, "Screw it, I'm switching out these jimmy-rigged megaphone speakers with a couple of Marshall half-stacks and I'm turning up the volume to 11!" Which hey, I guess he’s not the first religious leader to battle dwindling church attendance and participation with a little bit more noise.

Which got us thinking, what if a church in the States decided to implement its own call to prayer? What would people do if a preacher noticed that his congregation just didn’t have the size or motivation it used to, and so he decides to throw a bunch of Bose speakers on the roof of his church? And one morning, at 4:30, he pours himself a cup of coffee and grabs the mic? Wake up sleepy heads! Good morning! It’s time to pray! Hey, I’m talking to you! Don’t even THINK about going back to sleep! God knows where you live! Hey! HEY!!! Get UP!!!

Probably wouldn’t go over too well -- especially when much of the neighborhood is spending the pre-dawn mornings reminding Dora to “baila! baila!” in her dance off with the pirate piggies.